Munition-supply system for an armored vehicle weapon
AssigneeKrauss-Maffei Aktiengesellschaft
InventorsMarkus Spotzl, Erich Drosen, Leonhard Pongratz, Ferenc Kotai
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An armored vehicle with a rotatable turret, e.g. a tank, has its gun (cannon) supplied from a munitions bunker behind the turret in which the munitions rounds are stored in tubes inclined at angles less than 90.degree. to the axis of the gun when the breech thereof is aligned with an opening in the magazine through which the rounds are fed from a tunnel in the magazine aligned with the gun. The rounds lie in substantially horizontal planes and are withdrawn from storage tubes by a device movable axially along the tunnel and swingable into alignment with each tube to withdraw the round therefrom and feed it through the opening into the breech of the gun.
Claims11
A weapon supply system for a large caliber weapon comprising:
- means forming a munitions compartment rearwardly of said weapon and rotatable therewith upon traversing of said weapon, said compartment having a window opening toward said weapon and through which munitions rounds can be fed to load said weapon;
- a plurality of holding tubes disposed in said compartment and adapted to receive respective munitions rounds at spaced-apart locations in a plurality of substantially horizontal planes whereby loading tunnel is formed in said compartment in line with said window, said holding tubes being stationary within said compartment, being provided in arrays on opposite sides of said tunnel, being mutually parallel within each array and having respective round-removal openings turned toward said tunnel;
- and
- a loading mechanism in said tunnel common for all said tubes for removing individual rounds from said holding tubes and feeding said rounds through said window into said weapon said loading mechanism comprising:
- round-engaging means engageable with a round in a selected one of said holding tubes,
- means for swingably displacing said round-engaging means about a substantially horizontal axis whereby said round engaging means is positioned selectively in said planes,
- means for displacing said round-engaging means angularly about a substantially upright axis for selectively and individually aligning said round-engaging means with each of said holding tubes at the respective round-removal openings, and
- means for shifting said axes and said round-engaging means along said tunnel toward and away from said window.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.